A great ball of fire about a mile in diameter, changing colors as it kept shooting upward, from deep purple to orange, expanding, growing bigger, rising as it was expanding, an elemental force freed from its bonds after being chained for billions of years.On the first atomic explosion in New Mexico, 16 Jul 1945.

From 'Drama of the Atomic Bomb Found Climax in July 16 Test', in New York Times (26 Sep 1945). This was the first of a series of articles by Laurence, who was the only civilian witness of the first bomb test. He was on a flight to see the dropping of a bomb on Nagasaki. Laurence, science writer for the NYT, had been requested for service to the War Department to explain the atomic bomb to the lay public.

I searched along the changing edge Where, sky-pierced now the cloud had broken. I saw no bird, no blade of wing, No song was spoken. I stood, my eyes turned upward still And drank the air and breathed the light. Then, like a hawk upon the wind, I climbed the sky, I made the flight.

If [science] tends to thicken the crust of ice on which, as it were, we are skating, it is all right. If it tries to find, or professes to have found, the solid ground at the bottom of the water it is all wrong. Our business is with the thickening of this crust by extending our knowledge downward from above, as ice gets thicker while the frost lasts; we should not try to freeze upwards from the bottom.

It is suitable to the magnificent harmony of the universe that the species of creatures should, by gentle degrees, ascend upward from us toward His perfection, as we see them gradually descend from us downward.

May we not assure ourselves that whatever womans thought and study shall embrace will thereby receive a new inspiration, that she will save science from materialism, and art from a gross realism; that the eternal womanly shall lead upward and onward?

As quoted in The Fair Women, ch. 16, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann (1981).From a paper published in Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building, a book sponsored by the Board of Lady Managers of the Commission that planned the 1893 World's Columbian Expositio

Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for societynay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.

The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this, What is the use of climbing Mount Everest ? and my answer must at once be, It is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. Its no use. So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you wont see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.

We receive it as a fact, that some minds are so constituted as absolutely to require for their nurture the severe logic of the abstract sciences; that rigorous sequence of ideas which leads from the premises to the conclusion, by a path, arduous and narrow, it may be, and which the youthful reason may find it hard to mount, but where it cannot stray; and on which, if it move at all, it must move onward and upward . Even for intellects of a different character, whose natural aptitude is for moral evidence and those relations of ideas which are perceived and appreciated by taste, the study of the exact sciences may be recommended as the best protection against the errors into which they are most likely to fall. Although the study of language is in many respects no mean exercise in logic, yet it must be admitted that an eminently practical mind is hardly to be formed without mathematical training.

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- Carl Sagan